Skip to main content

Work and social alienation

Philosophical Studies volume 180, pages 133–158 (2023)Cite this article

Abstract

In this paper, I offer an account of social alienation, a genre of alienation engendered by contemporary work that has gone largely overlooked in the ethics of labor. Social alienation consists in a corruption of workers’ relations to their social life and the people that make it up. When one is socially alienated, one’s sociality and close relations exist as a mere afterthought or break from work, while labor is the central activity of one’s life. While one might think that existing solutions to alienated labor would resolve this social alienation, I suggest that such solutions at best leave the problem intact and may in fact contribute to it by giving labor the place of priority in workers’ lives. Resolving social alienation, I suggest, requires rethinking the amount of time we commit to work, the rigidity of the work schedule, and most crucially, the value that we attribute to work as the primary source of purpose in our lives.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Access options

Buy single article

Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Notes

  1. Elster 1986a, 110–111.

  2. Pieper 1948, 28.

  3. Leopold 2018.

  4. Wood 2004.

  5. Jaeggi, 2014, 25.

  6. Ibid., 2.

  7. Ibid., 2.

  8. Ramsey, 3.

  9. See for instance Schroeder and Arpaly, 1999.

  10. Hardimon 1994, 121.

  11. Rose 2016, pp. 9–14.

  12. Ibid. 1–2.

  13. FRED Economic Data.

  14. OECD 2022.

  15. FRED Economic Data.

  16. Parker, 1971.

  17. Russell, 1932.

  18. Thompson, 2016.

  19. Gini 2003, p. 22.

  20. Jaffe 2021.

  21. Crisp 2021.

  22. Kahneman et al., 2004.

  23. Rohrer et al., 2018.

  24. See for instance Heathwood 2016, 2019.

  25. It might again seem odd to point out that people desire more social activity, given that I’ve argued that work interferes with the quality of such activity. However, this survey evidence might imply that people think their social activities would be of higher quality if they had more time to spend on them.

  26. Jenkins et al., 2008.

  27. Maestas et al., 2017.

  28. Ware 2012.

  29. Cholbi 2018, 3.

  30. Cholbi 2018.

  31. Finnis 1980.

  32. Fletcher 2013.

  33. Murphy, 2001.

  34. Bradley 2014.

  35. Hurka 1993, 39.

  36. Or perhaps even less commonly, cases where one is subjectively alienated but doesn’t mind this experience.

  37. Elster, 1986b, 102–103.

  38. Ibid., 103–105.

  39. Ibid., 107.

  40. Ibid., 98.

  41. Ibid., 99.

  42. It is worth noting that in other writings, Elster seems to soften his endorsement of self-realizing activity over social relations. He says, “I shall only compare self-realization and consumption, although these do not exhaust all the possibilities. Some people devote their lives to friendship or to contemplation,” implying that social activity may not count as either self-realization or consumption and is therefore not his subject (Elster, 1986a, 45).

  43. Elster, 1986b, 120.

  44. Gilabert 2015, 198.

  45. Kandiyali 2020, 564.

  46. Ibid., 564–567.

  47. Gomberg 2007, 66–74.

  48. Elster, 1986b, 99–100.

  49. Montaigne 1580.

  50. Pinsker 2020.

  51. Ibid.

  52. Ibid.

  53. Kandiyali 2020, 583.

  54. Samuel 2021, 13.

  55. Montaigne 1580.

  56. Williams 1981, 18.

  57. Wright, 2010, 4.

  58. Marx, 1863, pp. 303-4.

  59. Marx, 1846, p. 22.

  60. Marx 1894, pp. 958–959.

  61. Ibid., 959.

  62. Marx, 1844, p.104.

  63. Ibid., 124.

  64. See for instance G.A. Cohen (1974) “Marx’s Dialectic of Labor.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 3(3): 235–261; James C. Klagge (1986) “Marx’s Realms of ‘Freedom’ and ‘Necessity’.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 16 (4): 769–777; Jan Kandiyali (2014) “Freedom and Necessity in Marx’s Account of Communism.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 22 (1): 104–123.

  65. Marx, 1875, 321.

  66. Kandiyali 2020, 575.

  67. Rose 2016.

  68. I thank an anonymous reviewer for identifying this worry.

  69. Putnam 1995.

  70. Meadows-Fernandez 2017.

  71. Hasdell 2020, 15–18.

  72. Ibid., 16.

  73. Ibid., 16.

  74. Wright, 2009, 3–4.

  75. Renzulli 2021.

  76. Booth 2019.

  77. BBC, 2021.

  78. Choudhury, Foroughi, and Larson, 2020.

  79. Hasdell 2020, 16.

  80. Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2014.

References

  • BBC (2021). “Four-day week ‘an overwhelming success’ in Iceland."

  • Booth, R. (2019). “Four-day week: trial finds lower stress and increased productivity.”The Guardian.

  • Bradley, B. (2014). “Objective theories of well-being”. The Cambridge Companion to Utilitarianism (pp. 220–238). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Cholbi, M. (2018). “The Desire For Work As An Adaptive. Preference ” Autonomy, 4, 2–17

    Google Scholar 

  • Choudhury, P., Foroughi, C., & Larson, B. (2020). Work-from-anywhere: The productivity effects of geographic flexibility. Strategic Management, 42(4), 655–683

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crisp, R. (2021). “Well-Being.“. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

  • de Montaigne, M. (1580). On Friendship. Trans. M.A. Screech. London: Penguin Books

    Google Scholar 

  • Elster, J. (1986a). An Introduction to Karl Marx. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • ––––– “Self-Realization in Work and Politics: The Marxist Conception of the Good Life.”Social Philosophy and Policy3 (2):97–126

  • Finnis, J. (1980). Natural Law and Natural Rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Fletcher, G. (2013). A Fresh Start for the Objective List Theory of Well-Being. Utilitas, 25(2), 206–220

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • FRED Economic Data, “Average Annual Hours Worked by Persons Engaged for United States."

  • Gilabert, P. (2015). "The Socialist Principle ‘From Each According to Their Abilities, To Each According to Their Needs.’"Journal of Social Philosophy, 46(2), 197–225

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ––––– (2020). “Alienation, Freedom, and Dignity.”Philosophical Topics 48(2), 51-79

  • Gini, A. (2003). The Importance of Being Lazy: In Praise of Play, Leisure, and Vacation. New York, NY: Routledge

    Google Scholar 

  • Gomberg, P. (2007). How to Make Opportunity Equal. Walden, MA: Blackwell

  • Hardimon, M. O. (1994). Hegel’s Social Philosophy: The Project of Reconciliation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

  • Harvard Graduate School of Education: Making Caring Common Project. (2014). “The Children We Mean to Raise: The Real Messages Adults Are Sending About Values.”

  • Hasdell, R. (2020). “What We Know About Universal Basic Income: A Cross Synthesis of Reviews. ” Stanford, CA: Basic Income Lab

    Google Scholar 

  • Heathwood, C. (2016). “Desire-Fulfillment Theory”. The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Well-being (pp. 135–147). London: Routledge

    Google Scholar 

  • ––– (2019). “Which Desires are Relevant to Well-being? Nous, 53(3), 664–688

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hurka, T. (1993). Perfectionism. Oxford: Clarendon Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Jaffe, S. (2021). Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone. New York, NY: Hachette Book Group

    Google Scholar 

  • Jenkins, K., Kopicki, A., Van Horn, C., & Zukin, C. (2008). “The anxious American worker. ” Rutgers University Heldrich Center for Workplace Development: Worktrends

  • Kahneman, D., Krueger, A., Schkade, D., Schwarz, N., & Stone, A. (2004). A survey method for characterizing daily life experience: the day reconstruction method. Science, 306(5702), 1776–1780

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kandiyali, J. (2020). "The Importance of Others: Marx on Unalienated Production."Ethics, 130(4), 555–587

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leopold, D. (2018). “Alienation.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

  • Maestas, N., Mullen, K. J., Powell, D., von Wachter, T., & Wenger, J. B. (2017). "Working conditions in the United States: Results of the 2015 American working conditions survey." RAND Corporation

  • Marx, K. (1894).Capital: Volume III. Trans. D. Fernbach. London: Penguin Books

    Google Scholar 

  • ––––– (1875). "Critique of the Gotha Program." Trans. L. Easton & K. Guddat, ed. L. Simon. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publushing

  • ––––– (1844). “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts.” Trans. M. Milligan. Moscow: Progress Publishers

  • ––––– (1846). The German Ideology. Trans. R. Pascal. London: International Publishers

  • ––––– (1863). Theories of Surplus Value III. Trans. G.A. Bonner & E. Burns, ed. K. Kautsky. London: Lawrence and Wishart

  • Meadows-Fernandez, R. (2017). “There’s such a thing as post-graduation depression. I know: I had it.” The Washington Post.

  • OECD (2022). “Hours worked"

  • Parker, S. (1971). The Future of Work and Leisure. New York, NY: Praeger Publishers

    Google Scholar 

  • Pieper, J. (1948). Leisure: The Basis of Culture. Trans. Gerlad Malsbary. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Pinsker, J. (2020). “Why People Get the ‘Sunday Scaries. ’” The Atlantic

  • Putnam, R. (1995). "Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital."Journal of Democracy, 6(1), 65–78

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ramsay, H. (2005). Reclaiming Leisure: Art, Sport, and Philosophy. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Renzulli, K. (2021). “33 Places in the U.S. Where the Minimum Wage Is Already $15 an Hour—or More.” Newsweek

  • Rohrer, J. M., Richter, D., Brümmer, M., Wagner, G. G., & Schmukle, S. C. (2018). Successfully striving for happiness: Socially engaged pursuits predict increases in life satisfaction. Psychological science, 29(8), 1291–1298

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rose, J. (2016). Free Time. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Russell, B. (1932). “In Praise of Idleness.” Harpers.

  • Samuel, J. (2021). “An Individual Reality, Separate from Oneself: Alienation and Sociality in Moral Theory.” Inquiry (ahead of print)

  • Schroeder, T. and Arpaly, N. “Alienation and Externality.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy(29)3, 371–387

  • Thompson, D. (2019). “Workism is Making Americans Miserable.” The Atlantic.

  • Ware, B. (2012). The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, B. (1981). “Persons, Character, and Morality,” reprinted in Moral Luck. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press

  • Wood, A. (2004). Karl Marx, second edition. London: Routledge

  • Wright, E. O. (2010). Envisioning Real Utopias. Verso

  • Hurka, T. (2021) "Against ‘Good for’/‘Well-Being’, for ‘Simply Good.’" Philosophical Quarterly 71 (4), 803-822

Download references

Acknowledgments

I'd like to thank audiences at UC Boulder, UNC Charlotte, Tilburg University, and the Eastern APA for their helpful feedback on previous versions of this paper. Thanks also to Kenneth Baynes, Charles Prusik, Nicole Whalen, and two anonymous reviewers for detailed comments that significantly improved the paper. And thanks especially to Keshav Singh for encouraging me to pursue this project and for loads of thoughtful comments and conversations along the way.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA

    Chris Bousquet

Authors
  1. Chris Bousquet
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chris Bousquet.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Bousquet, C. Work and social alienation. Philos Stud 180, 133–158 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-022-01880-9

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-022-01880-9